I’m among the vast majority of McGill students that don’t own cars. It’s not something I think about a lot, and when I do, it’s to reflect on just how relaxing it is cruising the sidewalks rather than struggling to decipher unintelligible parking signs (what kind of city has parking signs that are only comprehensible if you have both a Rosetta stone and a calendar?).

This past summer though, I went back home to Vancouver and got a job approximately a 35-minute drive from my house. Six days a week, I would wake up at 7 a.m. and try to avoid rush hour traffic in order to be on time. As the summer wore on and I cared less and less about renting out RVs to gawking tourists, I began to cut things close in the mornings. By the end of the summer, I was no longer living dangerously. I was getting stuck in full-blown rush hour traffic, leaving me in peril of being spectacularly late.

There was a way around this gridlock, however. At one point, a two-lane highway converges for a tunnel. Where you’re supposed to merge is clearly demarcated but the winning strategy, in my, and some other unscrupulous commuters’ eyes, was to wait as long as possible and bypass the 100-200 cars that had followed the rules of the road and waited their turn.

When I left my house at an appropriate time, I’d looked with disdain on these lawbreakers, but suddenly I was one of them.

People who had waited were understandably upset when I cut them off. Sometimes they’d box me out, other times they’d just glare into my rearview mirror and honk. Once, a guy let me think he was letting me in and then rocketed forward, inches from my side mirror, flashing me the dirty bird. Needless to say, I called in late for work, citing “car trouble,” and menacingly followed him around for the next half hour as he anxiously circled his workplace.

By living in this pedestrian-friendly city, I’ve excised road rage from my life. Unfortunately, a malignant habit has arisen to replace it—Internet rage.

See, this past summer wasn’t all work. I found the time to start playing a board game called Settlers of Catan. Basically four players attempt to slit each other’s throats (economically, not physically) on an imaginary island until one player wins. It’s about as nerdy as it sounds, but also incredibly addictive. I played a lot in the summer, faced withdrawal during the fall semester, and then went back at it with a passion over the winter break. Faced with the prospect of the shakes once again come January, I downloaded an online version of the game. It wasn’t the same as sitting down with four friends and doing it live, but it was as close as I was going to get.

Now, Catan’s a game of both strategy and luck. It’s a little like poker in that sense. So, it’s very conceivable for a worse player to beat a better one. And, also like poker, it’s not uncommon for a good player (who’s an asshole) to berate a lucky beginner for their poor play. Let me say one thing in my defence: I would never, ever say, in person, the kind of things I say anonymously on the Internet but, for some reason, the combination of rage and the mask of technological anonymity combine to make me the biggest jerk on the planet.

I usually begin fairly innocuously: “Hey, nice move buddy,” I mentally sneer. But soon it escalates. An F-bomb here, an F-bomb there, and it’s off to the races. Soon others berate me for my immaturity. That’s when I usually bring their mothers in.

Being anonymous on the Internet gives me the same feeling of invincibility I always felt in my car, but more intensely. Recently however, I learned that both my copy editor and a friend’s mother (Mrs. Wilkens) also play the game online. Next time I start chastising an anonymous Catan player, I’m going to imagine Mrs. Wilkens’s face reacting to the filth spewing from my keyboard.

I wish I had my car back.